(8)?-Block vs (11)Lyndis vs (20)Rikku 2013
Results Round One Thursday, August 15th, 2013 Ulti's Analysis ?-Block was hilarious for a lot of reasons. One, he was the favorite in the match. That by itself is nuts to me even though I picked him, because L-Block's run in 2007 is still having after-effects. 6 years later, we're still sitting here trying to predict the strength of random inanimate objects in character battles. The other thing is that even though he was the favorite, Rikku had an amazing case for pulling the so-called upset and winning. ?-Block was literally destined to have a sophomore slump in his first actual contest appearance, all because he beat L-Block in the bonus poll back in 2007 (and is still the reason we have bonus polls). That is unbelievably hilarious to me, and given all this the match played out exactly as one would expect. Rikku jumped out to a lead that couldn't be beaten, but ?-Block still had this crazy contest strength that could have won a lot of other matches. Rikku won easily, but 1266 votes isn't some huge number that says ?-Block should never see a contest again. Were he in the 2008 field instead of 2013's, he might have done some serious damage. The killer here is Lyndis might me my favorite female character ever short of Commander Shepard, and after trying to get her into a contest for years I get to watch her lose to a coin block. Yay. Zen's (Late) Analysis ?-Block was the favorite here because he had beaten WCC, Pong Paddle and then-Champion L-Block in a post-2007 bonus match. That's cool and all, but as discussed above, nobody seemed to care for these joke objects as much anymore, so people started pushing for Rikku in the 11th hour right before this match. People had been pushing her for a while, actually, but a lot of people clung to that bonus poll and stuck to their ?-Block picks. And Rikku won! And won pretty easily. Leon likes to blame the pic I used for Rikku here. Is it fan art? Yyyyyes. Did I know that at the time? Well... It was willful ignorance is what it was. My entire MO this contest was to "use new pics for characters who always get the same shit." I would scour through fan wikis and obscure tumblrs looking for official art that people either never had found in high enough resolution or were too lazy to render. I can't remember where I found this Rikku pic, but it was Rikku against some palm trees, and it took me almost two hours to render right. The entire time I was thinking "is this official art? I don't think this is official art. Well, it might be. Maybe I should do research. Eh, I'm already an hour in. Fuck it, let's see if Bacon uses it. It's probably official. Maybe. Maybe." Regardless of the legality of the play here, Rikku won by a good amount, and even if her 15-year-old boobs (shame on you) helped her win, it was still a win, and we put another "what if" character/object out to pasture. KP mentioned earlier that Rikku looked pretty strong in the stats here, and I believe it. It's weird to think she might be the fourth strongest FFX character. Have we ever tried to nominate Lulu and her Lulus? Or this guy? EDIT: I forgot to talk about Lyndis. It's a shame she never made it into Smash, there are already three dozen Fire Emblem characters, why not one more? This was her once chance to shine and she got beaten by TJF and a box. Sorry, Lyn. Category:2013 Contest Matches